The time is the 1840s, the combatants are the United States and Mexico, and the war that resulted is one of the least known and most important in both countries' histories—a conflict that really began much earlier, and whose consequences still echo today. A former chief historian of the U.S. Forest Service and the author of Adopted Son: Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship That Saved the Revolution, David Clary presents this epic struggle for a continent through original sources on both sides. To Mexico, the yanquis pouring into her Texas and California territories threatened Mexican sovereignty and security. To the U.S. government, they manifested their destiny to rule the continent. The two nations, each raising an eagle as her standard, blustered and blundered into a war, argues Clary, because no one on either side was brave enough to resist their countrymen's march into it.